Blind trust

An article entitled, “Tethered by a string and trust, a blind sprinter and his guide make history,” profiles a Paralympic blind runner and his guide after setting a world record for totally blind sprinters in the 100-meter dash with a time of 10.92 seconds.

David Brown and his guide, Jerome Avery

The article describes how they started running together and how they manage to be in perfect sync with each other during a race. It also talks about their relationship off the track and a little bit about their personalities.

I think this is a good example of an athlete profile in that it covers two people who stand out not just for their running abilities, but also for their strong trust in each other. Our book Telling True Stories gives tips on how to write a good profile, such as characterizing the person and constructing their story in a way that after reading, the reader has an opinion about them.

After reading this profile, I did have an opinion on the two athletes. I found them to be strong individuals physically and mentally, and that they must be very hard workers to have to do what would be considered a normal activity in a different way than everyone else.

In writing sports profiles, it’s important to cover something about the subject that people would not know otherwise, such as their lives outside of the sport. This profile talked about what the athletes like to do together when they aren’t training and how they interact. Although it covered some of this, I would’ve liked to know more about them and maybe what it was like when they first became paired up – the struggles they faced, how they overcame them, how the blind runner was able to trust his guide, etc.